L.A.’s Butterfly effect

Awards event raises funds for homeless

Dana Walden, and her co-chairs Rebecca Gayheart-Dane and Rick Hess, turned Saturday night’s ninth annual Chrysalis Butterfly Ball into something of a Fox family affair. As the 20th Century Fox Television prexy put it to those 650 guests dining on the Pacific Palisades lawn of Susan Harris and Hayward J. Kaiser, the evening’s three honorees have “some of the most important shows at my company.” No doubt about that assessment, since those award recipients were Seth MacFarlane, Ryan Murphy and Brett Ratner.

MacFarlane’s “Family Guy” wife Alex Borstein set the tone of the evening when she sang “a roast of a song” to her boss, which opined, “Seth, you’ve got so much money you sometimes use a $50 just to wipe your ass. You should meet a nice girl and stop dating whores.”

Phyllis Diller introduced MacFarlane and said, “They wanted to get Betty White. They thought it would be good to have a relic here. Where is Seth?” she asked. “Is he drunk already?”

In case anyone forgot that Chrysalis helps to employ the homeless, MacFarlane emphasized that point in his acceptance speech. “It’s necessary to thank the homeless, because without them none of us would be here,” he began. “Most of the homeless will never know what it is like to accept an award, ride in a limousine or adopt a trendy black baby.”

Murphy talked about his recent visit to the downtown offices of Chrysalis, which services 3,500 clients a year: “I was shocked they could do it with song and dance, and people were polite enough to not mention I look like John Malkovich.” He then promised to provide Chrysalis clients with “four jobs on the Fox lot” during the next season of “Glee,” and also to record a song with 100% of the royalties going to the employment charity: “Like ‘We Are the World’ but with better hair.”

Ratner, in turn, choked up a bit when he recalled his own father’s chronic bouts with unemployment.

“He stayed away from us for years because of his embarrassment,” Ratner said. “More than just giving people jobs, Chrysalis reunites families.”